Discovery and mechanistic studies of a general air-promoted metal-catalyzed aerobic N-alkylation reaction of amides and amines with alcohols

C Liu, S Liao, Q Li, S Feng, Q Sun, X Yu…

Index: Liu, Chuanzhi; Liao, Shiheng; Li, Qiang; Feng, Sunlin; Sun, Qing; Yu, Xiaochun; Xu, Qing Journal of Organic Chemistry, 2011 , vol. 76, # 14 p. 5759 - 5773

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Citation Number: 44

Abstract

The thermodynamically unfavorable anaerobic dehydrogenative alcohol activation to aldehydes and hydridometal species is found to be the bottleneck in metal-catalyzed N- alkylations due to a general and unnoticed catalyst deactivation by amines/amides. Thus, different from the anaerobic dehydrogenation process in borrowing hydrogen or hydrogen autotransfer reactions that require noble metal complexes or addition of capricious ligands ...